Newsom Tweets for Governor

Californians your governor of the future may be here in more ways than you imagine. Mayor Gavin Newsom turned to social media to announce his run at the state's highest position. (Published Tuesday, Apr 21, 2009)

"It's official- running for Gov of CA," he tweeted Tuesday morning. "Wanted you to be the first to know. Need your help."

In using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to make his announcement, Newsom ripped a page right out of Mr. Obama's fundraising playbook. The digital mayor wanted his army of followers to retweet his announcement for one reason: to raise $20,000 on day one of his campaign.

Newsom Saves Face with Facebook

"Help us raise $20,000 online today," he tweeted just two hours after his official announcement on Tuesday. "Need your support if we are going to change CA. Please ReTweet."

During his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama showed the world that politics had changed in this country. It had entered a digital age, where young people could be the driving force behind an election.

"The way that Gavin Newsom announced will become standard practice in the post-Obama era of politics," Simon Rosenberg, who heads New Democrat Network, which studies Democratic policy issues, told our friends at the San Francisco Chronicle. "We're seeing a reinventing of politics ... and in a state as wired as California, and a campaign as expensive as this one will be, the candidates who can figure out how to tap into the power and passion of their supporters will have an advantage."

"We can't afford to keep returning to the same old tired ideas and expect a different result," he said in his announcement video.

It only makes sense that Newsom, 41, who is expected to be running against much older competition-possibly including Attorney General Jerry Brown, 71, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 75, Antonio Villaraigosa, 56- would reach out to a younger audience by taking the campaign directly to them.

And if tweeting his annoucement was not enough, the mayor's first act as governor hopeful: drive down to Palo Alto in his hybrid SUV and hold a press conference at Facebook's headquarters.